BGR has discovered a pretty big security flaw in AT&T’s version of the Galaxy S II, which hits shelves tomorrow. For users who have a unlock pattern or pin set, they can simply bypass it by waking up their screen to unlock and then let the screen timeout to go black. Then simply, the user can wake up the phone once again and they’ll no longer have to use a pattern or pin to access the phone. BGR shows how simple it is in the video above.
Samsung offers a temporary work around, while they work on a permanent solution, after the break:
Virgin Mobile USA just officially announced the LG Optimus Slider and HTC Wildfire S, their latest Android handsets coming to Best Buy at the end of October.
We told you about a Best Buy leak a few days ago confirming the Optimus Slider’s specs, which is really just a refreshed version of the $99 Optimus V. The specs are largely unchanged from the V apart from the slide-out hardware QWERTY keyboard and Android 2.3. If you’re not familiar with that device, expect the Slider to sport a 3.2-inch color LCD touhcscreen, 3.2 megapixel main camera, WiFi/3G, and 4 hours battery life (3 days standby). You’ll be able to grab it on October 17 from Virgin, or on October 31st at Best Buy and RadioShack for $200. It will hit Target November 6, and November 13 in Sprint stores.
Also announced today is the HTC Wildfire S, the first HTC device on Virgin. The Wildfire S will comes with a 3.2-inch HVGA touchscreen display, 5 megapixel main camera with flash, 600MHz processor, 3G/WiFi, Android 2.3 and HTC Sense on top. The silver model will be available exclusively to Virgin customers (and Best Buy). You’ll be able to pick it up for $200 on October 23 through RadioShack and Best Buy. Read more
Flickr has had an iOS client on the market since September 20th, but it took a lot of teeth gnashing and cursing from the Android camp before the company would unveil the official Android app. Well, here it is… The Flickr for Android app lets you take photos, enhance them with filters and quickly share on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and other image sharing services.
It’s nice that you can take advantage of geotagging and built-in mapping to explore activities and places where the photos have been taken. Commenting is also supported and you’ll especially appreciate stunning full screen browsing and slideshows. The app is free and you can grab your copy in Android Market. Now that it’s been finally released, perhaps the program will help tilt Flickr camera and cameraphone usage stats (see below) in favor of Android and away from Apple’s iPhone. Full release notes after the break.
Samsung’s seven-inch Galaxy Tab was launched last year on September 2 at the IFA in Berlin and as of April of 2011 they managed to ship six million units worldwide. A year later, the Korean company has updated the tablet with a thinner form factor and a speedier processor. It’s also gotten a new name to convey the enhancements to buyers, the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. According to Samsung’s press release, the new version supports faster 3G HSPA+ connectivity and runs a speedier 1.2GHz processor versus the “Hummingbird” 1GHz chip found inside its predecessor. It also features WiFi Channel Bonding which bonds two wireless channels into one for improved network connection and data transfer at up to twice the speed.
The device is 9.96mm thick and weighs in at 345 grams. This compares to 11.98 millimeter depth and 380 grams of weight of the original Galaxy Tab 7.0. The front camera is of a 2.0-megapixel variety (1.2 megapixels on the original model), and RAM has been bumped up from 512MB to 1GB. On the software front, the Plus runs Android Honeycomb 3.2 which is optimized for seven-inch devices, in addition to Samsung’s latest TouchWiz user interface. Other specs are left unchanged, including 16/32GB of built-in storage expandable via a microSD card slot, a three-megapixel camera on the back and a 4000 mAh battery. The new devices launches at the end of October in Austria and Indonesia, Samsung said, followed by a U.S. launch and the global roll out. Full specs after the break.
Samsung Electronics at the eighth annual Samsung Mobile Solutions Forum at the Westin Taipei Hotel yesterday unveiled an improved version of its Exynos system-on-a-chip solution for smartphones and tablets. The Exynos 4212 silicon is a successor to the 4210 processor which powers the company’s Galaxy S II smartphone. The new chip features a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processing core clocked at 1.5GHz (versus a 1.2GHz CPU core in the Exynos 4210). The Exynos 4212 will be manufactured using a 32-nanometer process so it should draw less power than its predecessor. It is also 30 percent more efficient, Samsung claims, and sports a 50 percent better graphics performance.
Unfortunately, the company wouldn’t say which graphics processor unit the new Exynos 4212 chip is utilizing. For comparison, the Exynos 4210 in the Galaxy S II smartphone packs in graphics processing unit based on the quad-core Mali-400 core from ARM Holdings, a fables chip maker from the UK. It’s the fastest GPU in any current smartphone, benchmarks show. However, the Mali-400 GPU core falls short in the triangle throughput tests, which is a major disadvantage over the iPad 2′s A5 processor that clocks nine times the graphics performance of the original iPad’s A4 chip.
Apple has made its concerns official. The iPhone maker fears Samsung tablet will lure consumers away from the powerful iTunes ecosystem. Apple’s been successfully leveraging iTunes to tie people to the platform through app and entertainment content sales.
The heated Apple vs. Samsung legal battle over who’s copying who is really about the ecosystem rather than the hardware or the patents. That’s the gist of today’s hearing before the Federal Court in Sydney related to an Apple-requested ban on sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in Australia. According toSmh.com.au, lawyers for Apple argued that the launch of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 could take away iPad 2 sales so quickly that buyers may be “seduced” from the iOS platform.
It’s all about the apps and the broader ecosystem, Apple’s legal team told Justice Annabelle Bennett, arguing the Galaxy Tab 10.1 “is vastly the one that is going to be targeting the iPad 2″. IDC numbers released today suggest that that tablet shipments to Australia and New Zealand doubled sequentially in the June quarter, which the research firm attributed to an influx of Android tablets recently released into those markets.
Apple’s lawyers then resorted to the “fire hose” metaphor to make their case:
This is going to be launched on the market with the velocity of a fire hose and it is going to just come in and take away iPad 2 sales so quickly that by the time we get to final hearing the full impact of the patent infringement will be to the detriment of Apple and to the benefit of Samsung.
And this bit about the battle of ecosystems:
They’ll then be Android people and the investment in the apps that they make to purchase on their Galaxy Tab will be something they can’t use on an Apple product.
